In the previous blog posting we explored how to use Site Columns to propagate data throughout a Site

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Hi

Great blog posting. I have 1 question tho.

This appears to only make the new Site Column available to child sites and the creating site. Is there a way to use these site columns in other sites??

Hi Doug,

I have been using this method but one problem that I am having and it's a major concern is that if you remove any items from the list that drives the site column(in your case say you remove Finance), then it will delete that metadata from items that use that in other places. So in your case if you removed Finances from the Company Departments list then all Employees in the Employees list that had Finances as their department would lose that information. Can you suggest how I can prevent that?

Hi Doug,

Thanks for the quick reply. I really appreciate it. I have thought of using Events to prevent such things. But the problem is not to prevent the deletion of items. Let me explain. We have documents that need to be stored for later retreival. When these docs are saved we need to save the Customer as a metadata. This customer metadata is what needs to be driven off the list. Now I am going to use a Timer job to keep this list in sync with the Database table. Now consider the scenario that they delete some customers from the db. Then our timer job would also remove it from the list. (Here is where I can prevent it from deleting. But if I prevent it from being deleted, then the next time someone goes to save a doc they see customers that no longer exist. And since they have thousands they want to limit the choice to be only the valid ones. Now if we do allow them to delete it, then sharepoint deletes the metadata from existing documents which prevents us to search for the document.

Sorry that this is too long. But I am trying to be as verbose as possible.

Another option that I am looking at is driving the metadata with a BDC, but I am not sure if this same problem of data being removed if an Item does not exist in the BDC will occur.

Your thought on this will be greatly appreciated.  

Thanks Again,

Sabin

Doug,

    Thank you for the education - learning alot this evening.  I was wondering if there is a way to perform the same type of funtion between Site Collections?

    Is there anyway to pull data up to the root from the children instead of the other way with site cols.  

    Thank you in advance for any ideas you can provide and keep up the good work with the blog.  

Michael

Hi Doug,

Thanks for your reply again. A work around to this problem I have found is to use an extra site column that has the same value as the one that is associated with the list. So for instance when I upload a doc, I choose the metadata from a list of available values. As soon as I add the doc to the library, I have a List Event that copies the selected value into another column. So if in the future, they remove an item from the list of possible metadata, it will remove it from the document metadata but the document still has this backup metadata column that has the original value.

About marking it as deleted may not work in our scenario because it will change the metadata in the doc library anyway and users might get confused.

I don't know if Microsoft is aware that this kind of problem exists or what they recommend for it. Let me know your thoughts on it. This has been a great discussion for me.

Thanks again,

Sabin

Hi Doug,

Thanks for the blog and the quick replies.

Sabin

Doug,

This is a great tip for static lists like departments within a company.  I'm trying to do something a bit different.  I have a list called Support Log, containing every issue with my product reported by any customer (only a few customers).  I want to give customers access to at least view the status of their own issues, but don't want them to see issues from our other customers.  I am exploring the ideas of a subsite for each customer, but cannot figure out how to view a list located on a parent site.  It's hard to believe I'm the first person trying to do this.  What is the usual solution?

Thanks, Patrick

Hi - Great blog!  I was wondering if you could help me? I have created a List and in that I added a site column (Scheduled Start Date) I am now not using this and wish to Delete it, but I don't have a Delete button in my Change Column form.  I am the administrator so should have the rights but can't see how to do this.

Good evening from sunny Greece,

I'm not familiar with sharepoint, I'm just a humble software engineer. 2 weeks ago a friend from the office asked me to help him out with his project, although i'm pretty busy I was also curious to check what sharepoint is all about. Everything were running smoothly and we handed over the project on time.

As it always happens they wanted some enhancments and I would apreciate any help since it is out of my league.The issue is as follows: On edit form we have a  lookup column where we can choose a document from a folder structure to add a link document is it possible, either add a treeview instead of the left list box and from there add it??? Or leave look up as it is and the left hand listbox will be populates base on a treeview selection?? Any suggestion is highly apreciated.

Doug,

Great set of Posts.

I have a variation to the scenarios you have have described. I need to create a site column that displays a list of countries sourced from an external data source . ie not a list or a hard coded set of values in SharePoint. I am using WSS 3.0.

any point in the right direction would be appreciated.

Cheers

Adam

Tasso,

Glad that you are looking into SharePoint.

The type of enhancement that is being requested will require some custom development, from what you have mentioned I see two possible solutions:

  using SharePoint Designer 2007

  developing a custom Web Part and adding it to the edit form

Both, depend on how much time on how comfortable you are with each tool. The easiest and fastest is the one using SharePoint Designer 2007.

Doug

Adam,

With the information that you have provided, there are a couple of ideas that come to mind.

1. Link the SharePoint List to a Microsoft Access Database that connects to that External Data Source

2. Develop a custom tool that populates the SharePoint List from that External Data Source

The first choice while it does not require custom development, will require some maintenance to ensure that the data is up to date.

Regards,

Doug

Thanks for your write up on this Doug.

I'm in the process of applying site columns at a top level site that are going to be used by multiple departments.  I'm hoping to relate the contents of the site columns and I'm struggling with how to implement it.  

Example:  I am creating a site column named Vendor.  This column references a list of Vendors.  I have another site column named Applications referencing a list of applications.  These lists are quite long.  I want to display the lists as drop downs so that once a Vendor is chosen, the application list is filtered, displaying only those applications matching the vendor selected.  If, for example, I choose Microsoft as my vendor, then I see SharePoint, Exchange, Biztalk and all the other Microsoft Applications (But, I don't see anything else)

Any pointers you could give would be much appreciated.

Hi there and thanks for the great info.

I use site columns in a few child sites and it's working great. The only thing I can't figure out is how to turn OFF the hyperlink from the selected item within a list to the edit screen of the lookup list. I want the site column to only popluate the list, not navigate to it.

Any ideas??

Thanks,

Katy

Hi,

Thanks for the great Info. I am looking for a slightly different solution. I want to create a content type field (Check box - Multi Choice) i want to populate the choice list from a List. Lookup field will generate a dropdown field.

Any Idea?

Thanks

Sankar

Hi Doug,

Thanks for the immediate reply. This approach looks interesting and it should be helpfull for my solution. It will be great if you can explain in detail on this approach. Thanks a lot.. looking forward for your new blog.

Thanks

Sankar

There have been some great ideas posted in the comments section of this blog, particularly to the following

Hi there thanks for the informations.

I have a page layout created from a custom content type which included custom site columns as i commented earlier in the blog. I am building a custom CQWP to show the data from the content type. I want to sort the items in the custom CQWP on most frequently accessed. I was thinking is it possible to have a hit counter kind of site column in the content type to store every hit to the page using the content type. Or is there any other way to implement the same?

Thanks

Sankar

Hi Doug,

Thanks for your suggestion.

i have created a custom field type for Hit counter and stored the count from the Audit logs by iterating through the log entries. In my custom CQWP when i set the sort by to new custom field and sort direction as ASC/DESC changes are not afftecting the result of the CQWP. I would like to know is there any method available to check the query or the Hit counter value while displaying the result in the Custom CQWP.

Thanks

Sankar

Hi Doug,

I was creating a custom CQWP. i wanted to give a background color for the group header and items in the CQWP. I have change the item background color in the controls.css and configured as stlesheet in the masterpage. It is working fine. I wanted to give a rounded header style and background color for the group header. I would like to know how i can implement the same leveraging the stylesheet properties of Custom CQWP.

Thanks

Sankar

Hi Doug,

Your blogs are too good. Thanks.

Is it possible to get a loop-up data from one sub-site to another sub-site which are residing in the same parent or main site. If yes, plese advice me the steps to do this.

Thanks is advance.

Hi Doug,

with the answer you have given to Michael i.e. pulling value from sub-site to main site, I wanted it in WebForm just like lookup data. Is this possible?

Hi Doug,

Quite useful stuff. I was just wondering, how do i add 'select one of these' in the list when the data is mandatory. Otherwise it gives the top one as default.

Regards,

Deependra

Good stuff :)

Very helpful

A+++

In MOSS 2007, I'm attempting to delete a Site column.

My questions are:

1) Is if there is a way to know where a Site Column is being used so that I can delete permanently?

2) Will it allow me to delete a Site Column if it is use in some list or another content type somewhere in the site collection.

Thanks

Site columns based on a column in a list is fine, my question is if I have a list that contains an "Active" column and only want to display items in the site column that a marked as "Active" when adding or editing existing records is there a way to do this? Originally I thought it would be easy to base the site column on a view of a list that only displayed "Active" entries, but you can not limit the values in a list in this manner and use it to fuel a list based site column.

Thank you,

Gary out...

Gary,

Thank you for reading the blog.

This functionality is not available out of the box, it can be achieved through a few ways:

  Combination of Field Types and custom development.

  Setting up a workflow on a list in which users update the status ( Active or Inactive ), kicking off the workflow that another list built and used for the Site Column

Regards,

Doug Ortiz